Backing a winner

A gracious frontage leads to a revived and more liveable rear section that’s still in touch with the past

New Farm in the 1890s: the park was still a racecourse, the Brisbane Powerhouse site was still a swamp and things were on the up before the down of the 1893 depression. Industry and employment in the area were booming and demand for local accommodation followed. Blocks of flats appeared alongside graceful old villa estates and about that time, a stately home was added to the streetscape near the river.

Today, subdivision has confined the house to a 1518sq m suburban block and it has been owned by a few families and been through a few reno projects, but the historic home with its terraced front garden still has a graceful street appeal.

Out the back, however, a new chapter has been added to this home’s memoirs. Architect Kevin Hayes, of Kevin Hayes Architects, gave an inspiring account as he walked me through the changes made by his fierm for Bianca Toth and Derek Treacy. Kevin, who once spent time as a builder and worked on some 800 renovation projects, has now downed his carpenter’s tools, but he still gets a buzz out of transforming older homes.

“All the work I have done is about the social interaction, building a relationship with the client and working with them to create a home that suits their needs,” Kevin says.

While he believes that a family home is complex, the core functional issues are all about “clothes and cooking”. “You need an extremely functional place to make meals and rooms where clothing can be washed, folded and stored,” he says.

This house in New Farm is no exception. Almost all of the original house remains, but the days of having servants, and their living quarters, are long gone, so the architects were asked to modernise the kitchen and living area, and add more bedrooms.

The owners prior to Kevin’s clients had done their best to make their mark with what the 1980s had to offer, making the kitchen a dark brick internalised room tacked on to the back of the house. The latest changes transformed this gloomy room. The architects saw the opportunity to make space and light by opening the dining area to a new rotunda-shaped back veranda and designed the kitchen so it could fulfil its role, described by Kevin as “the cockpit of the home”.

A substantial part of the back yard was appropriated to incorporate the deck and kitchen, but it was worth it – the deck receives the glorious northern sun and the kitchen is spacious with “a decent pantry and a kitchen-office to tuck away those odds and ends that usually end up on the bench”, Kevin says.

“There is a lovely sense of flow between the kitchen, dining and deck because the main structure is not held up by support poles. To achieve this required a complicated design,” Kevin says, referring to where sliding doors open to the deck.

The entire design process to add on the deck, increase the kitchen and living area, incorporate a new guestroom and study upstairs and two new bedrooms downstairs took about two years, and then one more year for building.

“We use simple drawings to explain and illustrate the designs to the client. I believe that the client should end up with something they would have designed themselves if they had the technical skill,” Kevin says.
He also reports that they were “free and easy with the use of modern materials”, but stayed true to the style and scale of the original home incorporating elements such as high ceilings and wide skirting boards in the new areas.

The home now feels more comfortable with space for each family member to have their own individual retreat. There is also more connection with the garden thanks to the rotunda deck, which places a living and entertainment area within a garden setting, albeit off the ground.

ARCHITECTURAL TEAM // KEVIN HAYES, BIANCA TOTH AND DEREK TREACY, KEVIN HAYES ARCHITECTS, PH: 3852 3190. WW.KHARCHITECTS.COM
BUILDER // GRAHAME PILGRIM, SUNDREAM HOMES, PH: 3883 2736